Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…Sure. I’m going to read you a Franz Kafka quotation, and you tell me what you think of it. “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for?” What do you think? You’ve written a book about a pandemic, right? Yeah. I’m going to disagree with Kafka on this one. Why does reading have to be something that stabs you in the heart every time you pick up a book? Isn’t it nice, in a moment when the country is reeling under a historical pandemic, to just read something that transports you to a different world for a minute? I would maybe flip that around and say that if you’re a fiction writer, maybe just any writer of books, maybe you should . . . I need to think this through, but maybe you shouldn’t write books that don’t knock you over, and stab you in the heart, and gut you, and push you to the furthest remotest edge of your talent. But as a reader, I don’t really agree with that. I think it’s important to read those books, but —…

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